A MOTHER died after being given penicillin before a minor operation despite telling doctors that she was allergic to the drug, an inquest was told yesterday.

Teresa Innes, 38, was wearing a red allergy band on her wrist and her medical notes stated that she should not be given the antibiotic. However, a doctor at Bradford Royal Infirmary prescribed it as she was about to undergo routine surgery to drain an abscess on her thigh.

She suffered anaphylactic shock which stopped her heart for 35 minutes resulting in brain damage and a persistent vegetative state from which she never recovered.

The former care worker died two years later, in 2003, after Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, then President of the High Court Family Division, gave the hospital permission to withdraw her artificial feeding.

At her inquest yesterday, Bradford Coroner’s Court was told that Ms Innes had been for a week’s holiday to Corfu in September 2001 with her son Scott, 17, and noticed an infection on her left thigh when she returned, thought to have come from an insect bite.

She developed an abscess on her leg and was prescribed non-penicillin antibiotics by her GP. A week later, when there was no improvement, she returned to her GP who referred her to Bradford Royal Infirmary.

On arrival at the hospital, at least four members of staff were told of her allergy and it was logged in her notes, the inquest was told. However, during a ward round at the hospital that evening, Ms Innes was prescribed penicillin by John Griffith, a doctor, before the minor operation to drain the abscess on her thigh scheduled for that night.

Her medical notes, the inquest was told, recorded that she was allergic to the drug and that she was wearing a bright red allergy band on her wrist.

The operation was later postponed to the next morning, when she was given a drip containing Magnapen, a form of penicillin.

A statement by Marlene Greaves, a close friend of Ms Innes who accompanied her to hospital, was read to the inquest. Ms Greaves, who has since died, explained how Ms Innes first had an allergic reaction to penicillin in 1997, after giving it to her nephew and then licking the spoon. She took two days to recover.

Ms Greaves recalled how Ms Innes was assessed in the accident and emergency department before being transferred to a ward.

“Teresa made a point of telling this doctor she was allergic to penicillin but he said he already knew because it was in her notes,” Ms Greaves said.

She said that Ms Innes was in pain and that it was “all she could do to lift one leg”.

Ms Greaves, who had been named as Ms Innes’s next of kin, was called early the next morning and told that her friend was seriously ill.

Ms Greaves said: “I couldn’t believe what they had done and pointed out how many times they had been told about her allergy.”

She said she was angry at the time and did not realise how serious the situation was.

“I feel in many ways Teresa was like a daughter to me. I think and hope if she was alive today she would feel the same about me,” she said. “It was just at a time in her life when things were looking up for Teresa. Her life was lost through such a needless mistake.”

Post-mortem examinations found that Ms Innes, whose upbringing was described as “something of a struggle”, died from brain damage due to a lack of oxygen brought on by anaphylactic shock and leading to an irrecoverable persistent vegetative state.

The inquest was told how, in a meeting between Ms Innes’s relatives and hospital staff, Dr Griffith admitted to writing the prescription but said he had not seen the wristband.

Nicholas Clarke, a doctor, who assessed her condition on arrival at the accident and emergency department, said Ms Innes came with a letter from her GP, Ian Stinson, which noted her allergy. He said he also noted the condition in her notes in “block capital letters” before handing them over to another member of staff.

The inquest continues.

LETHAL REACTION

Triggers include foods such as peanuts, shellfish and eggs; drugs such as penicillin and ibuprofen; insect stings and latex

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